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GLENDALE – A 58-year-old woman accused of hitting a Bob Hope Airport security agent while trying to take applesauce and other snacks for her elderly mother through security got a reprieve today from a judge who said the case would be dismissed if she stayed out of trouble for six months.

Nadine Kay Hays, of Camarillo, was captured on airport video that shows her getting into a tussle with a Transportation Security Administration agent while trying to take a cooler containing the snacks through airport security last April. Hays and her b93-year-old mother were heading to Nashville for a family wedding.

But Hays was instead arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor battery for her scuffle with the security guard.

“Officers come up and they cuff me, and they put me in the police car, and by now I’m hysterical because I’ve never had an encounter with the law,” Hays told KTLA5.

Hays insisted that she had checked with the TSA previously to see if she could take the snacks aboard the plane, and was assured that she could because of her mother’s medical condition. But the agents at the airport said the food couldn’t go on the plane, prompting an argument and then a tug-of-war with the blue cooler, she said.

“And at that point I said, ‘The ice chest belongs to me, give it to me,’ and a tug-of-war, that was kind of the scene in the airport,” she told Channel 5.

Hays said she eventually got the cooler back, threw the food away and passed through security. But she was arrested a short time later.

In court today, Glendale Superior Court Judge Frederick R. Rotenberg told Hays that he would dismiss the case in six months if she stayed out of trouble. He set another court date for Oct. 18.

“This should have happened a year ago,” Hays’ attorney, Mary Frances Prevost, told KTLA. “She should never have been arrested. She was arrested at the airport with her elderly mother. She was strip-searched at a jail. This should never have happened.”

Hays told the station her family and friends kept encouraging her to accept a plea bargain, but she refused.

“The toughest part was they all wanted me to take the plea bargain, but I said no I can’t do it,” she told Channel 5. “And if nothing else, it’s an example that I’ve set for my family.”